So I'm on a quest to remove my corruption. I'm exploring to the west of the giant whateveritis reddish map feature surrounded by undead. It is my understanding that there is a merchant city there (and perhaps a certain celebrity hangs out there too). It's a fun little thing to do, making sure I have enough but not too much in the way of resources for a long trek away from my base.

I climbed a giant structure towering over a river, connecting two cliff faces on opposite sides of the river. Well actually I was already at the top of one of the cliffs, so I just started across the structure. Some climbing was involved. Some sweat too, because if I screwed up I was going to die from the fall, and my bedroll is a long ways off.

In any case, I found a nice place with an "ok" view so I decided to turn off the gui. Unfortunately the shortcut is also the shortcut for Nvidia video recording stuff. It worked though, and I took a pic with no gui. Unfortunately the hide gui functionality works too well, and the shortcut is not bringing the gui back, so I'm stuck with no gui. Hitting esc brings up the menu (I can hear it) but it's invisible because, no gui, apparently.

So now I have to figure out how to get the gui back. First stop, console commands. Wish me luck.

edit: No luck through the console. So weird, the config file says alt-z is hidegui (no toggle) and so far I haven't found a "showgui/revealgui/turnguibackon" command. According to the config file, hiding the gui is a one way deal, and there's no way that's correct. Obviously.

edit: I could hear my guy starting to become dehydrated. I killed the .exe through task manager, as finding a solution was taking too long. If the game loads properly, I will change the shortcut to alt-x to avoid conflict with Nvidia and retest. What a weird problem, with no obvious solution, which is even weirder.

Ok, with that out of the way, I just realized I got off track and now I can see a glowing green wall. Even my barbarous brain can sense that's bad, so I'll need to find a new route to where I want to go.

On to religion. I picked the Frost Giant dude because I read his trainer is way up North and harder to get to than any of the others. But that's not a question. My question is more like: Religion? Worth the effort?

Should I start doing religious things? What can I expect to gain from it? Buffs, presumably, but is that all there is to it or is the system interesting/complex or somewhere in between?

Climbing. I'm getting better at sliding down sheer rock faces without dying. Great. I read that the class of armor you wear impacts how much stamina climbing consumes per second. I've also read that simply unequipping your armor and keeping it in your inventory removes any stam penalties while climbing? Is any of this correct?

Made it to the Relic Hunter city, met with a poor man's version of the Barbarian himself. Now what? I'm cured of corruption and there doesn't seem to be much to do in the city. I'm tempted to head back to my base and continue my treadmilling up the crafting trees. If I missed something here or I find a reason to be here in the future, I can always make the journey again. It wasn't great, but it wasn't too bad either.

I'd say I'm slightly disappointed the city was so bereft of interesting things to see/do/experience, although admittedly all I did was run around and see what I could interact with. I could be missing huge things that I'm just not aware of. That said, I'm not *too* disappointed. I didn't have high expectations in the first place. I came here to heal a tiny bit of corruption and I've done that.

Next, I think I'll go hunting heavy hide. I hear elephants and rhinos are the sources, and I saw a rhino on my way here. That said, I need to find some closer to base. Corpse running back here is not really an option.

edit: Lol, oh wait. I just realized I need brimstone and one of the reasons I made the journey was the sources of brimstone in what appear to be pools to the north. I should probably fill up on brimstone before leaving. I did see and harvest some silverstone during the journey, so I'm already past 50% capacity. This could make the return home a slog.

I'm at the second perk for encumbrance and the first perk for grit. I saw that the first agility perk reduces stamina consumption while running, which sounded good. But agility doesn't seem to do much of anything?

Ok, this is driving me nuts, mostly because I can't find a straight answer to it.

Repairing
a) what happens if I simply select the tool to be repaired in my inventory/hotbar and hit repair? I have the mats needed for that particular tool.
b) Does something different happen if I put the tool and mats into a blacksmith bench and use the bench interface repair button?
c) What do repair kits do? Are they a good idea/bad idea/waste of materials? Can you use repair kits in scenarios a) or b) and if so, does anything change?

I'm mostly asking what is most resource efficient way to repair my iron tools? The answer has changed so many times from the beta through multiple patches to today, I can't find an answer that I can be confident is correct.

edit: Iron tools can be repaired at the armorbench and at the blacksmith bench. If we assume all else being equal (i.e. no thralls for either or whatever), can I expect 1 station to repair more efficiently than the other?

Repairs. Repairing at benches is advantageous when you have higher tier thralls that can make it take fewer resources. Repair kits are there so you don't have to sweat specific resources. I never, ever bothered.

Sepermeru (Relic Hunter City). It's a good place to get thralls. Nothing else. There are a few character interactions available that some people might call story. There is no story. Merchants aren't worth a damn.

Perks. I don't remember much of anything. First strength perk = double truncheon damage. That's good. There is a tier 3 or 4 perk that gives health regen. That's awesome. Those two things were pretty much my focus. No idea where the other points went.

Brimstone. You are going to want the sandstorm mask before you go harvesting in the poison pools, whatever they are called. Of course the sandstorm mask takes steel... you can get it from corpses or there are a couple caves in the south that have brimstone.

Elephants and Rhinos are a bitch, but there is a simple solution, which leads me to...

Religion: Each religion has a benefit that is very useful. Set = poison arrows, poisons arrows = MUCH easier combat. There is another that gives you food that doesn't go bad (Yog?). Mitra gives you healing stuff. Derketo gives you... pasties. You can learn all religions for free, don't pay the points for the first tier of any religion. Find the religion trainer. All but Derketo are easy to get to. Derketo is in the far, far east.

It doesn't cost anything but time to restart on another server. Take it from a guy who did it three times. I'd jump in to keep you company, but I just uninstalled it last night and I have more interesting games to play for the moment.

If you can get Fret to jump on, he could give you the keys to my clan which would come with all the stuff (assuming he hasn't deleted it) you need for end game... but then you would still be lonely (with 30 or so thralls) and the game would be kind of pointless because you'd already have most everything.

Oh btw, thralls requiring food is coming with the pet patch. If I hadn't quit before, I think that might make me quit.

Yep, if you just took away the progression and put me at the end game I'd probably quit within a day or so.

Chances are the end tier stuff will just be too fiddly/micromanagement-y for me and I'll run out of steam by then. Right now is just about the right level of busy work to still be fun.

I knew that I was late to the party and that most people had already moved on. It's just that the world seems a little sterile and empty without others doing their thing. Again, that's fine, just an observation. Of course I haven't actually done any significant exploring, but games like this are almost always about creating your own content and entertainment.

Reading, there appears to be 2 types of tier 2 buildings. Insulated Wood and Stonebrick. What's the diff? I don't even know what criterion I should be using to decide one versus the other, if the availability of the resources aren't in question.

I suggest skipping stonebrick/tier 2 and going straight to tier 3. You want to do ONE piece of stonebrick for the journey step, but otherwise it just isn't worth it.

I initially thought about doing that, but I'm too low level for tier 3 still, and my plan is to just build another organically grown, slapped together tier 2 building beside my current tier 1 compound (compound is too big a word. Shack plus out structures, maybe).

One thing that I completely bypassed accidentally is a carpenter's bench. For whatever reason I never looked into how the usage of wood progressed. I followed the crafting trees for stone, iron and hide, mostly, but never looked at or even thought about wood. I should probably get a carpenter's bench going.

And thralls. There's really no excuse for waiting as long as I have to look into this part of the game. If I were to start over I would have thralls before I had steel, for example. Right now I have steel but I'm too low level to use it for anything, and still don't have any thralls. That's going to change shortly.

As I said, I was going to make a little tier 2 building beside my tier 1 building, but the materials are actually significant. Foundations alone require 7 iron reinforcements, and while I have tons of everything, a tier 2 compound approximately the same size as my tier 1 would drain everything I have then some.

I have a cook, and an entertainer (was my first, test thrall. Plus now I don't have to travel 1/2 way across the map to heal corruption).

I'm kind of...well, bored, already. I'm not an architect and I only get a little satisfaction out of building something beyond its basic functionality, so the idea of elaborate mcmansions to come aren't a huge appeal or motivating.

None of that is surprising, I've already put more time into Conan than I did into Ark, I think, so it's pretty clear that these kinds of games aren't my favourite genre.

Level 28. Have hundreds of steel bars, but still can't use them on anything, I don't believe.

Basic steaks and shredded roast are so abundant that I just eat constantly if I get hurt by getting surrounded. Obviously I eat out of combat but all the basic critters can be kited for days. Even just walking screws with their attack animations. NPC's are a little different as most of them pull out bows.

Combat is a little too easy imo, but the only dedicated hunting I've done are basic thrall camps. Everything else is just aggro while gathering, so I realize I haven't seen anything yet.

Still though, the basic world fauna is a little too much of a push over for a survival game, imo. My base is in the tier 2 zone.

I'm noticing that most tier 1 or 2 thralls only speed up crafting, they don't reduce resource requirements.

I've decided that my next goal will be accumulating some tier 3 thralls. As a solo player (even with the increased gathering rate on the server) the resource requirements start to become daunting. Even though wood is easy and plentiful to get, shaped wood is made at 10 to 1 ratio. That's...a lot of wood. And you need a LOT of shaped wood just for tier 2 buildings. A tier 3 carpenter reduces that ratio to 7 to 1. That means 30% less gathering. That's...pretty huge. Even though I like making resource runs, I only like them every once in awhile. Going out and harvesting an entire encumbrance worth of trees is fun, sometimes. Having to do it 3, 4, 5+ times in a row before I can make significant building progress is less fun.

So that's my motivation with hunting tier 3 thralls. It gives me a goal, it's fun (both the finding and the enthralling) and might make next tier crafting less daunting.

I'm not hunting named thralls because maybe sometime later when I'm making my tier 3 base (secret: I'm never going to last long enough to reach that stage. Doesn't matter. Planning for the future just in case), I might want to go thrall hunting again (for fun and profit) and if I already have the best thralls available, I won't be able to do that.

So now I have to find out where tier 3 thralls spawn. I don't believe I have seen a tier 3 npc yet, but I haven't looked closely.

Ok, yet another area where information is incomplete/misleading/contradictory. Thralls have changed many times since beta, apparently.

From what I can tell:

a) Thrall classes are randomly spawned. Small camps can have all thrall types. Possibly probability related, but not geoloc locked.
b) Thrall tiers are randomly spawned. Small camps can have tier 3 thralls. Potentially named too, but named are often specific to a geoloc/event.

So basically look everywhere and I'll find what I'm looking for eventually, even, potentially, at that small thrall camp 200m from my base.

I have no experience with No Man's Sky (except when it was first released, not applicable today). This is Ark in a Conan world. Fret tells me there is more to do end game in Conan but also that the world is less interesting getting there, and also less interesting in general.

From my perspective the ENTIRETY of gameplay is finding resources and turning them into interesting things and/or climbing the crafting tree to the next stuff to craft.

I was just hunting thralls and while the combat is primitive it's also "good enough", mostly because I haven't done it a thousand times yet and there is actual risk of dying, which so far hasn't been an issue since I forgot to pick up my water skin when I first created my character.

If you like to design and build an interesting base, that also helps. There is a lot to be said using the game to express your creativity in architecture. It seems to be well designed for doing that.

So I found a named fighter in a tiny camp, but then realized I got a PoI notice that was basically called "named NPC's camp" so I guess he's a specific spawn to that location.

I found a tier 2 tanner, and since I have a tannery I grabbed her and put her on the wheel. What I didn't realize at the time was that she'd be on their for an hour and that meant I couldn't break any other thralls until then. I then found a tier 2 taskmaster, who I've left unconscious beside the wheel. Don't know if he wakes up and runs away, despawns, lasts forever until I can switch out thralls, or what. Guess I'll find out.

I *could* build another pain wheel, but I'm level 29 (just shy of 30) and at 30 I can make the next wheel that houses 3 thralls at a time I think, so I think I'll hold off until then. I could go beat up some animals in the meantime.

So, so far in my thrall questing I've wiped out 4-5 small camps (4-8 thralls each) and not seen anything above tier 2 (except for named dude). I'm right beside the Yog Settlement so I guess I'll go there. I've fought my way through that a few times but I wasn't watching the thrall levels at the time.

For those watching at home, the unconscious task master just lay there beside the wheel for 30+ minutes. When the Tanner was done, I was able to re-bind the taskmaster and put him on the wheel.

Wait, according to the wiki tier 1 thralls take an hour to break, tier 2 take 3 hours to break. No way was that tanner 3 hours (edit: Actually, maybe. I wasn't paying attention and have been doing things in between playing, so I haven't had a good gauge of time passing). Not sure what the right numbers are. Oh well.

having major performance problems around larger thrall camps. All that "I don't die talk" has come back to haunt me. Many of my attacks simply pass through the NPC models and do nothing. Enemy pikemen are the worst, as their weapons are the most effective having the longest range. Many times my client and the server can't agree on where everyone is, who's attacking in which direction or whether I rolled out of the way in time or not. It's frustrating, but not insanely so. I have yet to actually try any tuning. There is also hitching that feels either engine or texture related. There have been a few times that I've nearly fallen off cliffs because of it. When it happens in the middle of combat, any sort of thoughtful combat tactics go out the window and I often have to simply roll many times in a row until I get enough distance or the client and server sync up again. It's kind of strange, given that I'm the only client connected. It might be my configuration, like I said, I haven't tried to fix any of it yet.

The long runs back to my corpse are getting tiresome. Tiresome enough that I'll be taking a break from the game for a bit, despite having some fun at the Black Galleon (grabbed a tier 3 armorsmith!).

The long runs back to my corpse are getting tiresome. Tiresome enough that I'll be taking a break from the game for a bit, despite having some fun at the Black Galleon (grabbed a tier 3 armorsmith!).

There's a reason we had a building right next to the Black Galleon.

I don't know if you realized you get three respawn points. The starting area, your bedroll and your bed. Generally bed should be in your base and your bedroll in the area you are hunting, if it is far enough from home.

I don't know if you realized you get three respawn points. The starting area, your bedroll and your bed. Generally bed should be in your base and your bedroll in the area you are hunting, if it is far enough from home.

No I didn't. I was getting an inkling of an idea, but I hadn't figured it out yet, thanks. I had just recently grabbed some feats that enable me to make some beds, so I was getting there, slowly. My little base doesn't have a lot of interior room, so things are getting crowded. Lots of crafting stations (with thralls) are outside on any flat surface I could find. Rooftops and foundations.